


I Don't Know

by EnglandsGray



Series: Who You Really Are [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Kiss, Getting Together, ILYAnniversary2021, Post-The Final Problem, Reworking, Sherlolly - Freeform, The Final Problem, fic excerpt, steps towards a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28772862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglandsGray/pseuds/EnglandsGray
Summary: Every carefully worded home-truth she had rehearsed and re-rehearsed in every waking moment – and in her nightmares – was slipping through the gaps between her fingers.  With him in the room, everything was different.Scenes from during and after The Final Problem, reworked from my first fic in this fandom - Who You Really Are.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper
Series: Who You Really Are [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884091
Comments: 36
Kudos: 39





	1. Sherrinford - I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> Happy I Love You Anniversary 2021! I have this pandemic and the lockdowns to thank for my starting to write in this fandom (just six months ago - feels a lot longer!) and it, and being a part of this brilliant community, has been a true joy in an otherwise very bleak time. 
> 
> I have another piece finished, but not ready to publish... so to mark this gorgeous occasion, I have taken another look at a few key chapters from my first fic in the fandom - Who You Really Are - and reworked them. I have adored Sherlock and Molly since 2010, but I feel like I've only got to know them these last 6 months. A whole load of credit for that goes to the Sherlolly community - sending thanks and love to you <3
> 
> I hope you enjoy these chapters - if you fancy, click through to the series where you'll find the longer fic (some plot details from which I have removed here to help the piece stand on its own.)
> 
> I own nothing of the incredible world that is Sherlock, nor these beautiful characters. I only love them. All credit to the creators and the BBC. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr, if you like - englandsgray

Sherrinford.

Sometime in 2016

“Only it isn’t a name.”

Mycroft’s words washed over Sherlock as he took in the engraving on the brass nameplate affixed to the coffin lid. He felt a sickening inevitability in his gut. Closing his eyes, he turned away, returned to the coffin, placing his hands upon it, a parade of horrific possibilities taunting him as they danced before his eyes. He’d failed. He’d failed her.

“So it’s for somebody who loves somebody,” this from John.

“It’s for somebody who loves Sherlock. This is all about _you_ ,” Mycroft injected his words with the quiet venom that was his weapon of choice. “Everything here.”

Thus far, only David had saved anyone. He had saved John Watson from a life of horror and regret. Or at least he had intended to. Sherlock had only saved himself, everyone else had been disposed of with absolutely no regard for his efforts whether they pleased his sister or no and a crushing fear for the two men in the room with him encircled his chest like an iron band. And now…

“So who loves you? I’m assuming it’s not a long list,” Mycroft shot.

Sherlock wanted to reach for his phone, even though he knew full well that he didn’t have it. Wanted to check if she had replied to the text he sent her from the quayside, to scan her social media to reassure himself she was at home. Or work. Anywhere away from this hell which would place her too far away for even the terrifyingly vast reaches of Eurus’ net. He felt a pang of terror, tried to convince himself…

**_She is NOT here._ **

**** ****

“Irene Adler.” John’s natural conclusion. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. Look at the coffin. Unmarried, practical about death, alone.”

**_Alone._ **

**_Now the east wind was coming for…_ **

“Molly,” John realised.

“Molly Hooper,” Sherlock confirmed.

When she appeared on the CCTV screen Sherlock walked towards her. 

“Make her say it.” It was obvious to Eurus, and Sherlock. Most likely it was obvious to Mycroft. Not to John. Sherlock and his siblings, all three of them, were a blight on the lives of the good people they had come to know. If he survived this day, John really was a soldier; he would shoulder the burden of what he had experienced and carry it for the rest of his life with his head held high. 

But what Sherlock was about to put Molly Hooper through… the prospect was despicable. It was not that he doubted her strength, far from it. But only a true villain would strike when a person’s back was turned, and Molly was about as unprepared for this as it was possible to be.

He forced his mind to clear; steeled himself, raised the walls. Listened to Eurus’ conditions and focussed on the game.

“TICK TOCK TICK TOCK”

**_How long does she have?_ **

“What’s she doing? But why isn’t she answering her phone? Yes but it’s _me_ calling,” doubt seeped in as he watched her ignoring him.

**_Your currency is weakening._ **

When the answer-phone clicked into life Sherlock turned away, trying to disperse the building tension, to no avail. His eyes lifted to the camera in the corner of the room, asking for another chance.

“Okay, okay. Just one more time,” Eurus drawled. 

**_Come on now - Game Face._ **

**_John cares for Molly so much. Mary does too. And Rosie._ **

**_Grief does not divide._ **

****

**_Lemon tea. Honey._ **

**_Nausea._ **

**_Throat pain?_ **

**_Dear God – please!_ **

Sherlock put his head in his hands. Whipped it back up at the sound of her voice.

“Hello, Sherlock. Is this urgent? Because I’m not having a good day.”

**_She’s been crying..._ **

**_Concentrate!_ **

“Molly I just want you to do something very easy for me and not ask why,” he said.

“Oh God. Is this one of your stupid games.”

“No, it’s not a game…”

**_Pull her heart strings._ **

“… I need you to help me.”

“Look, I’m not at the lab.” Sherlock heard the softening in her voice. 

“It’s not about that.”

“Well quickly then.”

He felt himself at the edge of a precipice, raging waters below. There was no time, but he longed to give her what he could.

“Sherlock! What is it, what do you want?”

“TICK TOCK TICK TOCK”

“Molly, please, without asking why, just say these words.”

“What words?” That nervous smile in her voice.

“I – love - you.”

A weighty pause followed. 

“Leave me alone.”

Panic obliterated the squirming sensation in Sherlock’s centre and he reached for her with his hands. “Molly, no – please – no! Don’t hang up! Do not hang up!”

He heard his sister warn him and he took the deepest breath he could force down his windpipe. Molly was still on the line and on the attack and Sherlock was proud of her for refusing to let him go without making sure he knew who was in the wrong. Even though it quickly became clear that this was hurting her every bit as much as he feared it would.

“Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making fun of me?”

“Please, I swear, you just have to listen to me,” his heart was racing, desperation surged.

**_Calm down. Eurus will tell you to…_ **

****

“Softer, Sherlock.” He flicked his eyes to the corner of the room, then back.

**_Just a client._ **

**_Just a case._ **

“Molly, this is for a case. It’s… it’s a sort of experiment.”

“I’m not an experiment, Sherlock.”

“I know you’re not an experiment, you’re my friend. We’re friends, ” he threw the word away, found it distasteful as he looked at her - saw her, perhaps for the first time, as a whole life separate from his own. “But… please… just say those words for me.”

“Please don’t do this. Just… just… don’t do it,” she pleaded with him.

“It’s very important,” Sherlock felt giddy. “I can’t say why...”

**_… I am incapable…_ ** ****

****

“...but I promise you it is.”

“I can’t say that, I can’t… I can’t say that to you.” Molly said.

“Of course you can,” he felt sick with the mocking sound of his own voice. “Why can’t you?”

“You know why.”

_The one person who, unlike me, learned to see through your bullshit years ago._

**_No! Not now!_ **

**_Molly - for us to survive I have to be this..._ **

****

“No I don’t know why.”

Molly sniffed and sighed. Sherlock felt before he heard the weight of Molly’s next words. Her backbone. The inevitability of him, to her. 

“Of course you do.”

Sherlock closed his eyes. Time was when a bit of gentle, entertaining back and forth between him and Molly would have seen her give him what he wanted with a smile on her face, the bonus being that his interaction with her above the necessary would make it more likely that she acquiesce to his requests in future. Time was when Sherlock didn’t understand that that wasn’t how friendship worked; there was no place for manipulation – for games – if you wanted to gain from the relationship in any way aside from the material. If you desired the other person not to turn their back on you. Now, he knew her well and he also knew he was privileged to say so. She knew him better, though; she saw right through him. They were past playing. 

“Please just say it,” he said.

“I can’t. Not to you.” Molly’s voice wavered.

**_I need you to._ **

**** ****

“Why?” Sherlock asked - he needed her to give him a way to appeal to her logic, quickly.

“Because… because it’s tr…”

**_Oh God…_ ** ****

****

“Because it’s true, Sherlock.”

**_I’m sorry._ ** ****

****

“It’s always been true.”

**_Despite my indifference, ignorance, dismissal, cruelty…_ **

A heavy, deadly calm fell over Sherlock; a focussed anticipation. “Well, if it’s true, just say it anyway,”

**_I want to hear it..._ **

Molly laughed, Sherlock pictured her smile. “You bastard.”

**_A given._ **

“Say it anyway,” he persisted.

“You say it, “ Sherlock froze. “Go on. You say it first.” A new power in her voice now; her own Game.

Sherlock sensed Mycroft move behind him, hoped he wouldn’t dare speak. Sherlock blinked several times, cornered, fighting the urge to run, fighting the urge to lash out in desperate self-preservation. 

“What?” He spat.

**_There will be nowhere to hide…_ **

****

“Say it. Say it like you mean it.”

_Go to Hell, Sherlock._

_Go right in and make it look like you mean it._

**_Will it save her, Mary?_ **

Sherlock looked to the camera. “Final 30 seconds,” came his sister’s voice. He closed his eyes, closed out the world.

**_You can just say it, even if she can’t._ **

**_A case._ **

**_An experiment._ **

**_No sentiment._ **

****

“I…”

**_You’re not sentimental about her._ **

“… love you.”

Sherlock felt another sharp twist behind his diaphragm.

**_If I wasn’t everything that you think I am, everything that I think I am, would you still want to help me?_ **

****

_What do you need?_

**_You._ **

****

**_You._ **

**_You._ **

**** ****

His sister might need the proof, but Sherlock had long suspected he could not close down when it came to this woman. She was always there. She appeared - he sought her out - when he needed her, whether in the physical world or the one inside his own head. He didn’t need her for what she could do, he needed what she could do because it was _her._ Sherlock opened his eyes and looked straight at Molly, saw her eyes as clearly in his mind as if he were looking into her face.

**_If it’s true just say it anyway._ **

“I love you.”

His senses flared as if in the wake of a gunshot, like the imploding of solid walls or a sudden and sharp drop. A jolt of pure energy, which he felt resolve into absolute peace. Surety. Certainty. He was powerful and in control and… safe. In her hands.

Seconds passed.

“Molly..? Molly, please.” He heard his voice falter, longed with every fibre to reach over the uncross-able distance. Seconds from now, a world where nothing would ever truly matter again, all chances gone. If it were possible to feel a heart break, Sherlock did at that moment. 

“I love you.”

Her voice was little more than a whisper but it’s mark would be indelible. 

Relief was a palpable force in the room. Sherlock reeled, tipping his head back and then into his hands once more. He doubled over, his breath heaved out of him. There was a fire in his veins as he straightened, suddenly all the world was vivid – not joyous, nor euphoric, but heightened and powerful.

“Sherlock, however hard that was…” Mycroft began.

**_No! Not any more._ **

**** ****

“Eurus I won. I won,” Sherlock spoke over his brother.

**_Tell me she’s safe!_ **

The little red LED taunted him with the superiority of silence. 

**_Focus! Process later._ **

**_I have to get out of this hell._ **

**_We have to keep moving._ **

“Come on, play fair. The girl on the plane, I need to talk to her. I won! I saved Molly Hooper!”

“Saved her? From what?”

His sister’s face appeared before him. As she laid before him the intricacies of her ploy it was as though he could feel the strength leaving him. Hadn’t Eurus told him that she wanted to see how his mind worked, how he ticked? Well, he’d just given her everything. His sister’s taunting words pierced his armour like blades and he fought back against the pressure growing around him as she spoke. He’d been tricked. He didn’t know what was real, he was too trusting – even of someone he believed to be incapable of honesty.

“Look what you did to her...” Eurus pushed.

Sherlock turned away. Molly had no context to what had just happened. 

_I’m not an experiment, Sherlock._

“… look what you did to yourself.”

He deserved what he got – Molly had escaped Moriarty’s clutches purely because Sherlock had never given any indication that he was capable of returning her feelings and Moriarty had thrown her to Eurus for the same reason. Now, Sherlock had shown his hand, left himself vulnerable and Molly entirely exposed.

“All those complicated little emotions, I lost count.” How could Eurus - how could they all - be so cold, so unworthy. Sherlock felt his finger on the trigger.

**_Your life is not your own._ **

Eurus deigned to explain it to him and he knew that she knew, that she had observed as easily as she had read his composition, and she was choosing to disregard and objectify him. How the tables could turn. Sherlock’s stomach roiled in disgust.

“Emotional context, Sherlock, it destroys you every time. Now please, pull yourself together, the next one isn’t going to be so easy. I need you at peak efficiency. In your own time.”

Another door slid open. Though he was vaguely aware of Mycroft moving onwards, John with him, Sherlock felt an overpowering reluctance to follow. Eurus and Moriarty were silent, but this chamber was full of another voice; it rang with it. 

Molly.

Sherlock abandoned the pistol on the coffin stand and retrieved the lid from where it rested against the far wall. His eyes were drawn to the inscription, but he didn’t need to read the words because Molly spoke them. That was all he could hear. 

It felt vitally important to cover the casket. He placed the lid carefully over the empty interior and as soon as he did, it was so much easier to imagine someone lying within. Reluctant to release his hold, he spread his hand over the blonde wood, covered the heart of its spectral occupant and, despite his great effort, agonising emotion rose with astonishing speed and voracity. 

**_The engraving morphed: Molly Hooper._ **

It was like a kick to the gut. His own naval-gazing, self-absorbed moment of realisation made no difference. He hadn’t saved her. Her life was under threat from a thousand unknown enemies as well as some he knew very well indeed. Death waited just out of his field of vision and it was too monstrous a beast for him to slay. He could not protect the people he loved. There was a higher power at work and he was insignificant. 

_I love you._

He wasn’t worthy of those words, should never sully them with his breath. Molly embodied them. When she spoke, he felt. When she was there he had substance. He had everything. But now she would never be there again. He had used her, in the worst possible way; as a pawn in a game and, ultimately, for nothing. He’d humiliated her, belittled her and reduced the most wondrous thing about her to a bargaining tool; a plaything tossed between him and his sister. Blood began to rush in his ears and breathing was painful. His chest was going to burst open and spray the room in his blood. His vision was drenched in red.

“Sherlock,” John spoke from the threshold of a future which did not exist. 

“No. No...”


	2. London - Molly's Kitchen

London.

In that moment…

Hundreds of miles away, a teapot shattered on a kitchen floor and a heart with it.

Molly Hooper stifled the noise which came from the very depths of her with her hand but nothing could possibly hold back the feeling, like a pack of wild dogs tearing at her heart and her pride. She was going to die alone. When _she_ looked sad, there would be no one there to notice. And why? Because she was easy to need but impossible to love. 

She was an experiment; she served a fleeting purpose before being passed over. Alternatively a way to get to Sherlock or a way for Sherlock to get to whatever was just beyond her. Even when she had poured herself into escaping the cycle, she had only created a parody, a screaming self-portrait of a desperate woman who was defined entirely by one man. She had long since stopped counting the times when she wished her heart had chosen anyone but Sherlock but she chalked up every instance which proved she was an idiot for having done so. Self-loathing roiled in her stomach. 

She had wanted so badly to hurt him, throw it back at him and make him feel the deep embarrassment that would come with having to say something he considered so beneath him. 

_“I… love you.”_

An unstoppable wave of anguish broke over her as she heard his voice in her mind and she bent double on the floor, her eyes streaming. However hard she still clutched every word he had ever said to her heart, however carefully she searched between those words for scraps of hope, how she felt about him was tainted now by the knowledge that he had said he loved her, but only because she had told him to do it. 

_“I love you.”_

So sincere… it had been real and something… something minute in his tone, or maybe the panicky way he had begged her not to hang up. Molly wondered - had it really been just another game?

“Oh _God!_ ” She dug her nails into her face in rage. Sherlock had eviscerated her and here she was searching for any small reward be might have thrown her. Like a mouse in a lab.

_What did he do after telling you he loved you, Molly? Hung up, that’s what. Not so much as a thank you, not so much as another word. He probably went back to his keyboard or microscope or bloody Twitter, blithely carried on with his sainted existence, saving lives left, right and centre with no thought for the hearts he obliterates on the way._

Molly pulled herself to standing, slowly. She ached all over. Without a backward glance at the mess of broken china she walked out of the room.


	3. Sherrinford - John Watson

Sherrinford.

In that moment...

John Watson watched his friend unfasten the button of his suit jacket and, recognising the sign, felt his adrenaline rise ready for battle. But this wasn’t going to be one in which he could partake.

“No. No...” John heard Sherlock drag in a breath.

Then he watched as his friend raised and brought crashing down his balled fist onto the lid of the casket, smashing clean through it. With a roar that was animal, primal, Sherlock rained a pure and unbridled fury upon the coffin, lifting and slamming it onto the stand, obliterating it, reducing it to matchwood and ripped satin.

John wouldn’t have believed it were possible for his own heart to break any further, but it did then. Witnessing the raw agony his best friend was enduring as he lost all control. He’d had no idea. Once again, he had failed to observe.

Sherlock let out a final howl of gut-wrenching pain before falling to the cold floor of the cell.

John needed several breaths to master himself. He wondered whether Mycroft might step forward but really he knew he wouldn’t. A vision flashed across his mind.

_“This is family.”_

_“That’s why he stays!”_

John cleared his throat, straightened his back, picked up the pistol from where it lay discarded among the devastation and went to his friend.


	4. Warwickshire - Going Home

Walterston, Warwickshire

In the middle of that night.

Sherlock stood shivering on the doorstep thinking of Christmas. There merest glimpse of this house and he thought of Christmas. Felt warm. Tonight he couldn’t muster the strength to condemn his own nostalgia, too dwarfed was he by the enormity of what he had discovered. Feeling as he did and cloaked by the privacy of the moment, he afforded himself the opportunity to welcome the sensation of peace the sight of his parents’ home arose in him.

He heard the deadbolt slide back, the heavy old lock clunk and the door opened just wide enough for his mother’s eye to peer out at him. “Sherlock?"

She flung the door open. Dressed in a nightgown with her robe gathered hastily about her and her hair as bafflingly tidy, even though she had clearly been asleep moments before, as he remembered it in childhood. Sherlock had the unruly curls of his father’s youth, Mycroft their mother’s innate neatness. 

Sherlock’s heart constricted at the thought of his brother. Such a night of revelations he could never have predicted. 

“Why on Earth didn’t you use the side-door, the key is where it always is, silly boy...” His mother shepherded him into the hallway. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She switched on a lamp on the hall-stand, hardly pausing in her gentle berating of him until she looked up at his face in the light.

“Good Lord, Sherlock – whatever’s the matter?”

Sherlock took a breath. Prepared to blast apart the final standing pillar of his previous life.

“I found Victor Trevor, Mum.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I found him…” A lump rose in his throat, his chest tightened. “It… it took too long, I’m sorry.” He passed a hand over his aching eyes. 

“Come and sit down.” She lead him to the sitting room where a faint glow came from the embers of a fire in the grate. His mother deposited him on the settee and turned to light another lamp. 

The softness and familiar scent of the room was abhorrent. Sherlock was in a new world. One of concrete and glass, steel and impenetrable stone. Blackened timber. Deep water. Sherlock squirmed in the seat, glad of the fact his clothes were still soaking wet and cold to keep him from indulging in comfort and keeping uppermost in his mind the pain the people for whom he cared most had endured. He could smell the burnt joists above his sister’s room. Feel the slippery wet stone wall of the well and John’s arm around his shoulders. Help had arrived quickly once it had been called for and thank heaven. How long had it taken help to come for his sister? A lifetime. For his first friend, Victor Trevor, it never came. 

“What has happened?”

“Victor Trevor, the boy – my friend – who went missing at Musgrave – I found his remains tonight,” he answered his mother.

“Oh my good Lord.”

“He is being taken care of by Scotland Yard. I have Inspector Lestrade’s word that his family will receive the support they deserve and that Re… that Victor will be released to them for burial as soon as possible. There won’t be an enquiry.”

“What do you mean?”

Sherlock looked into his mother’s face, saw the anguish – fear - just below the surface. “I know what happened, Mum.”

“Oh, Sherlock...”

“I know about my sister. I know about Eurus, Mum…”

A wave crashed over him and swept away his energy, leaving him wasted. Lights danced in front of his eyes and chills ran across his skin. His heart boomed, out of rhythm. He reached for his mother, whose tears now ran freely. She pulled him to her, he lay his forehead against her shoulder like a child, desperate for reassurance.

“I won’t forget again, Mum – I promise. I’m so... so very sorry… I won’t forget her.”

“Darling boy.”

Violently shaken, Sherlock felt close to passing out. Concerned he might cry whilst perversely willing himself to. His eyes remained dry, though. His heart was bound by a stricken grief that refused to rise up as resolutely as it had refused to stay down just hours before. 

Numbness. Was he cold now? Did he not feel pain now? No, no – he could certainly feel it. But was this it, the turning point, the linchpin in his existence where he was no longer affected by it, no longer afraid? 

**_A flash of pure red._ **

He screwed his eyes shut to obliterate the livid face looming at the forefront of his mind.

“You’re soaking…” His mother was sitting him up, pushing the coat off his shoulders. The room was warm but he felt perished without his coat. The room was also spinning.

“There was water. Rising… too deep. Couldn’t get to him… in time…”

“Sherlock, lay down – now – on your side...”

__________

**_Cocoa._ **

A steaming mug thrust under his nose. He took it carefully. “A quarter brandy?” he enquired.

“Oh, at least.”

Sherlock watched his mother sit herself beside him on the settee. Pale dawn light was seeping under the curtains. A fire was lit in the grate. He had washed and dried and had on a pair of his father’s pyjamas. Green tartan. “I gave these pyjamas to Dad six Christmases ago.”

“Yes?”

“They’re barely worn.”

“Dad doesn’t wear pyjamas.”

“Neither do I.”

“You’re very alike.”

“Unless in company.”

“Not always, then. Perhaps barely at all.”

Sherlock met her eye. Felt scrutinised. Fought the childish urge to fire off a smart retort. Instead he smiled, so did his mother.

“Like I said, you’re just like your father,” she said. “He says I snore – I mean, really!”

_Love isn’t perfect._

Sherlock felt an expansion in his chest. Sipping his drink, he listened intently to his memory of Molly Hooper speaking, uneasy with a resolve yet to be sought, but grateful she remained with him in his mind at least; more than grateful. The feeling was bitter-sweet.

**_You’d know?_ **

****

_Better than you, yes._

**_Do go on then, Doctor._ **

_Love isn’t linear._

_It’s not an achievement where you get a certificate and a_

_carriage clock twenty years down the line for never making a mistake again._

_It’s taking the rough with the smooth, learning,_

_persevering through the uncomfortable things_

_because the person matters more._

**_Molly caught and quickly broke eye contact between them._ **

_And I don’t know that because I’m a doctor, Sherlock. I know because I’ve felt it._

Sherlock sighed, Molly’s image dispelling although the essence of her lingered; a constant reminder, nudging him forwards by degrees. The space behind his diaphragm coiled. He had so much to do; the time for distractions was past and he was still here for a reason. 

He rested the mug down. “Why have we never spoken about Eurus, Mum?”

He watched his mother breathe in deeply and sigh it out, her shoulders slumping. Her face became momentarily unreadable. Her gaze was focused upon the fire, in a lost time.

“What you need to understand, Sherlock, is that luring poor little Victor away and setting fire to that house were just a small part of what your sister did to you. I swear from the day she could focus, she only ever had her eyes trained on you.”

Sherlock watched her expression soften. “You were a wonderful big brother. You couldn’t do enough to help. Unlike Mycroft. As you might imagine, he found being a sibling something of a bother, but not you. Eurus was your shadow and you not only tolerated her but brought her along.”

Now her expression clouded as she paused. A heavy foreboding held the room. The eye of the hurricane. “She thrived on your attention. Any kind of attention would suffice.”

Sherlock was aware of his own quickening heart rate as he listened.

“She wanted to make you laugh, she wanted to make you cry. Wanted you to know everything but she had to be the teacher. She wanted to make you better so she hurt you herself.” His mother’s fingers worried at the fringing of the blanket over her knees. “She hurt herself out of curiosity. She hurt others simply because she could. The first time she killed she was four years old. A rat she laid a trap for herself. She told us she knew the rat had a litter because she had seen the nest, so she killed their mother to see what would happen to them.”

She took another unsteady breath.

“Cruelty. A commonplace trait among the gifted who are too foolish to realise that superiority which comes from the suppression of others is no advantage at all.”

_You’re a very stupid little boy._

**_Ordinary._ **

_Emotional context, it floors you every time._

**_Idiot!_ **

**_Fools._ **

**_You lower the IQ of the whole street._ **

****

**_It’s not your strong suit._ **

**_I suggest you avoid all attempts at a relationship in future._ **

**_If it’s true just say it anyway._ **

Sherlock closed his eyes.

“I was ashamed, Sherlock.”

Opening them again he looked straight into his mother’s.

“Ashamed that I didn’t protect your friend, that I didn’t prevent Eurus setting the fire – prevent her trying to kill us all even though I knew what she was capable of. But above all… I am ashamed to this day that I didn’t help you come to terms with what happened in a truthful way. I stood by and watched you find a way to cope yourself. As you grew, I thought who am I to bring the horror of it all crashing down on you when you were the one out of all of us who learned to move on.” 

Tears welled in her eyes, she wiped one away as it spilled. Sherlock sat forward and took her hand. This powerhouse of a woman, genius, the genetic spring from which all his and his siblings’ intellectual capabilities flowed. She had poured love on them all. Never – never – had she belittled or taunted them, pushed or colluded. Instead she had precisely and invisibly scaffolded them as they navigated life as disturbingly unique individuals. If anything could be noted about his and his brother’s upbringing, it was that Mycroft and their mother often clashed, Mycroft pushing back against the attention, where Sherlock quietly welcomed it and, he had to concede, he had been able to get away with murder. Perhaps now he had a better understanding of why. But their mother had adored them. She had done her best.

“There is no blame in this, Mum,” Sherlock said. “And if there were, it would not lie with you.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” she took his face in her hands, her lips pressed tightly together and tears still falling. 

The living room door creaked open and Sherlock watched his father enter the room. Dressed and ready for the day as the grandfather clock in the hall behind him chimed 6 o’clock, he smiled warmly at the pair.

“Good morning, dear. Hello, my boy. I take it you’ve come about Eurus.”

Sherlock was rendered speechless. His brain attempted to race away to hypothesising, but exhaustion quickly put paid to that, and all it came up with was the awareness of a headache.

“How on Earth did you know that?” His mother was as incredulous as he.

“Straightforward deduction, I’d have thought. This is our youngest son’s first visit within six months of the last since he flew the nest. The pair of you have evidently spent the better part of the night alternatively talking and weeping. Not to mention the tell-tale bottle of cognac minus its cork quietly evaporating fifty percent of its value on the drinks cabinet...”

“It could be Mycroft,” Sherlock pointed out.

“If it were Mycroft, dear boy, then all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would have been at the door moments after you, if not before.”

“I’ve only just arrived.”

“In my best pyjamas?” The old man raised his eyebrows at his son. Then he sighed, put his hands into the pockets of his fair-isle cardigan and came to sit opposite them.

“Edward Fletcher was just on the telephone. Scotland Yard at Musgrave overnight, helicopters and all sorts. Another bunch of rowdy twerps up to mischief wouldn’t have my boy haring up here in the middle of the night, now would it?”

Sherlock’s father sat forward in the seat, clasped his hands in front of him. Sherlock held his breath.

“Silliness aside, Sherlock, tell me – please – tell us; is Eurus alive?”

Sherlock heard his mother’s sharp intake of breath over the ringing in his ears. He took hold of her hand where it sat between them and held it tightly. Holding too his father’s gaze, he replied;

“Yes.” 


	5. London - Visiting Two Flats

London.

Later that day.

Grabbing just a few necessities from Baker Street had been straightforward enough, though not entirely without difficulty. The security detail was still in place and the windows boarded up. Mrs Hudson had embraced Sherlock when he entered the hallway, for some moments. He hadn’t minded. When she finally released him she handed him a pair of handcuffs.

“Ah. Thank you,” he said as he pocketed them.

“I am sorry about the boot, that day, Sherlock.”

“Not to worry. All for the best.”

“Yes, I hope so.”

He’d gone upstairs, cast his eye over the desolation that had previously been the living room. Objects, books and papers lay strewn among splinters of wood, lumps of plaster, brick dust and glass. Both his armchair and John’s were upturned. There was a lot of work to do.

Sherlock was about to turn towards the bedroom when he stopped. He picked his way among the debris to the bookcase behind where his chair usually sat. On the bottom shelf had been many tightly packed old volumes of this or that, less commonly referred to since the advent of Google, but to which – it pained him to admit – he was somewhat… loyal. Only one leather-bound spine remained in place, the rest lay scattered beneath. He removed it carefully, revealing a concealed, reinforced compartment where the pages ought to have been. Inside was a small rectangular photograph album, the cover of which was not ageing leather, but a fresh, forest green and royal blue tartan, the set shot through with yellow and red. He picked it out of its nook and took it with him to his room.

He packed very few things; fresh clothing in the main and one or two other essentials. As he was about to leave the room, he noticed the garment-carrier hung on the back of the door. He unzipped it, finding within one of his several Belstaffs. There was a tag pinned carefully to the lining, and the bag smelled faintly of expensive detergent. He pulled the coat out, brought the fabric to his nose and inhaled. 

**_Eurus._ **

‘Faith’ had apparently returned this coat via his usual dry-cleaners. Sadly, it had arrived after he had found the note she had planted, otherwise it might have helped him to be sure he had spent that evening in company. As it was, he had assumed, as she knew he would have, that this was garment-bag had appeared as part of the housekeeping duties which Mrs Hudson most definitely did not undertake at any point, ever. He had paid it no mind. 

The coat hadn’t been cleaned, though. The fabric smelled of rain, faintly of exhaust fumes, vinegar and – most prominently – his sister. Sherlock shrugged off the example he had been wearing and laid it on the bed. He swung on the other, picked up his holdall and strode from the room. 

Twenty minutes later, as evening and light rain were falling over the city, the cab pulled up outside John Watson’s flat. John answered the door, stepped aside to allow Sherlock to enter, closed it, indicated the sitting area and walked out of the room, returning moments later with two tumblers of whiskey.

“Family,” John held up his glass towards him.

“Family,” Sherlock tapped his against it.

“Who’d fucking have them?”

Sherlock almost spat his whiskey out and it took John some moments to force back the giggles sufficiently enough to take a drink. 

Another measure followed. Rosie disturbed and John brought her through. The room was cocoon-like and warm, but Sherlock couldn’t bring himself to relax. Deference to Mary saw to that, in a way it had from the beginning. He’d removed his coat and jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and he forced himself not to pace, but he remained standing, ostensibly taking an interest in the books on the bookshelf, artwork on the walls. Of course these things did interest him; he craved detail, not least when it came to attempting to generate a feeling of closeness to a very dear friend whom he missed terribly. 

Behind him John sat on the sofa gently shushing Rosie back to sleep on his chest. Sherlock’s eyelids felt leaden, his eyes dry and sore. He rubbed them and pinched the bridge of his nose while he worked out how long it had been since he last slept. With the exception of a fitful hour in his parent’s front room, and another couple at the hands of a tranquilliser, he had been awake for almost 36 hours, his exhaustion exacerbated in no small part by the miles they had travelled, the mental exertion, the physical stress and emotional… recalibration? He ran his hand down his face. He did not have the words to fully describe the ordeal they had endured, so he was beyond grateful that John had condensed their conversation into a succinct and apt toast and then largely left Sherlock to his thoughts in companionable silence. He should have realised, though, that there would be one aspect of what happened that John did want to discuss. It was ever thus. 

“You meant it, didn’t you?”

Sherlock sighed. ‘Meant what?’ was on the tip of his tongue but he was tired.

“I don’t think I understood. Before,” he said instead.

“You did,” John replied. Sherlock turned to his friend. “You once told me there was no wonder I fell in love with Mary because I was addicted to danger.”

“She was more than that, though,” Sherlock said.

“I know,” John rubbed his cheek against Rosie’s head, his eyes focussed somewhere distant for a moment. “I thought if you could fall in love, and frankly, I wasn’t sure if it was possible, that you’d do the same; fall for someone who slotted neatly into your vision of yourself.”

Sherlock listened intently. 

“Clever,” John offered. “Cunning, control issues. Posh.”

Sherlock smiled in spite of himself, sipped the whiskey.

“But I was wrong,” John continued.

“No.”

“I was. That stuff, it’s not you. You’re…”

Now Sherlock felt a jolt of apprehension as he prepared to hear the worst of himself. It was always worse still coming from John. His best friend having seen what he had seen of Sherlock and his family over the last few days - having witnessed Sherlock descend to the seventh circle of hell not long before - he braced himself for what he was about to hear. 

“What? What am I?” 

John stood carefully, took a step towards Sherlock.

“You’re a big old softy, that’s what.”

Sherlock half coughed, half laughed.

“Why am I your best friend?” John asked. “You said it yourself – I’m a romantic.”

“You’re also a crack shot.”

“True. But so are you.”

“Passable, but you’re the marksman.”

“No – I mean you’re a bloody romantic. I just don’t think you realised how important… love... was to you until Sherrinford.” 

Sherlock regarded John in the quiet which descended then. “I didn’t understand, before,” he repeated.

“But you do now.”

“I’m… not sure.”

“Well. You sounded sure. I think you need to talk to Molly. If that’s possible.”

“I want to.”

John picked up Sherlock’s phone from the coffee table and held it out to him.

“Get the hell on with it.”


	6. London - I Don't Know

London

An hour later.

Molly collided with a solid, dark mass on her front step. With her hood up and her head down against the chilly rain she had been focussed on getting to the corner shop and back as quickly as possible, knackered from the long day dealing with the police and goodness knows who else, so she hadn’t seen the poor soul she nearly sent flying. On instinct she grabbed the person’s arm as they staggered backwards. 

“Oh, blimey – I’m so…”

Realising it was Sherlock she stopped dead. Their eyes met and Molly registered exhaustion in his and felt a swooping in her tummy. This made her instantly furious and she dropped her hand from his arm. He was still looking at her.

“Forgive me,” he said while righting his stance, his voice low.

Molly noticed his hands at his side. The one not holding an overnight bag fidgeted uncomfortably. _Hold on – overnight bag?!_ Molly let out a tight, strangled sound that might have been a laugh and shook her head, the pitiful figure he was casting only enraging her more. Telling him and his _bloody_ bag where to go was seriously tempting, but not enough. 

She slammed her hand into the front of his coat, he raised his to catch the keys as they fell. 

“You’re going to explain,” Molly fought to keep her voice steady. “And then...”

Sherlock lifted his gaze from the key to her.

“And then?” The corners of his mouth were down-turned, weariness in his pale features.

“I don’t know.” She pushed past him and stormed down the path to the street.

__________

Molly crashed the cutlery drawer shut without meaning to, clattering forks and spoons into the mugs on the side and almost knocking over a Pot Noodle. Her heart was racing. She braced her arms against the edge of the worktop and took a calming breath, her eyes closed.

_Get a grip, woman,_ she told herself.

She was raw – top to toe a single exposed nerve. Being alone was what was best for her, what kept her safe from hurt, but grieving alone was exhausting in every way and it clearly didn’t get better with experience. She was trying her best to be everything her friends needed her to be – to be there and to be their strength – and the fight was there in her head, but it was getting to the point that her heart wasn’t in it. She needed a rest. She was done with games which were only fun for everyone else. 

Could she really do what she intended to?

She blew out a long breath as quietly as she could, knowing Sherlock was leaning on the cupboards behind her and nothing got past him. The frantic bubbling of the water in the kettle grew louder, rain hammered on the windows behind the lowered blinds. 

His hand came to rest on top of hers where it was balled into a fist on the surface. Molly’s eyes flew open and fixed on his knuckles, his wrist, his long pale fingers enclosing hers, warm and solid and real. She could feel him stood so close, could smell the rain on his coat.

“Molly...”

“No.”

She pulled her hand from under his and span around to face him. Fire rose in her and a thousand jumbled images and words flashed across her mind in a reddish haze, manifesting in a terrible urge in her right arm. She had to force herself not to raise it. She lifted her eyes to his face instead, fully expecting to see the condescending mock-confusion written there and relying on it to infuriate her further. If she couldn’t summon her own strength, she’d take it from him – see how he liked it. 

“I don’t want to know whose life you saved by breaking my heart...” Molly heard her voice waver, so she paused and swallowed, tried to stop her emotions running away with her and taking her composure with them.

“I didn’t save anyone,” Sherlock said.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, her stomach turned. “What?”

“What I mean is….”

Molly gestured to herself, “oh, do I have blood on my hands now?”

“What? No.”

Molly stepped forward and Sherlock backed away, his right hand flexed towards her but remained at his side. He was trying to stay calm, too.

“Does the experiment still offer validity, then? Or were you hoping for a second attempt?” she snapped.

“Molly, please...” Sherlock placed himself with the corner of the counter between him and her, his hand on the surface.

“Where would you like me?” Molly continued, casting around herself. “Do we need to do it on the phone? Does it matter that the conditions have altered, given that your test subject doesn’t feel the same as she did the first time around?”

Tears stung her eyes as the lie left her lips, her throat felt as if it had scalded to say it.

Sherlock’s face fell. He looked wretched. Molly waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. He turned around and walked over to the armchair, took hold of the handle of his bag. While his back was turned Molly hid her face in her hands, pressing her fingers into his eye sockets. Every carefully worded home-truth she had rehearsed and re-rehearsed in every waking moment – and in her nightmares – was slipping through the gaps between her fingers. With him in the room, everything was different. 

“Your hands could not be cleaner, Molly.” She looked at him when he spoke. “You are the one who saved a life. More than one.”

In his hands, Sherlock held the photograph album she had given him six Christmases before. The sight of it prompted another traitorous response from her body.

“Don’t, Sherlock. Please – don’t.”

“I’m not...”

“Yes you are!” Molly banged her hands down on the worktop. “It won’t work this time – I’m not just some silly girl...”

“I know you’re not.”

The calmer he made his voice the worse Molly felt. “Do you even know you’re doing it?” she asked him, hearing the shake in her voice as her heartrate climbed.

“Doing what?”

“Manipulating me. Everyone! Do you plan it out? Of course you do. You need time to get the right props together.” She gestured to the album, as she did she noticed his thumb was inserted between two of the pages. He was looking at the floor again, seeming to have abandoned whatever ploy he had been about to yank her heartstrings with. Whatever it was, Molly didn’t care.

“I understood very little, I fear,” he said, flicking his eyes up to meet hers and away again. 

The suit, the polished shoes, the hair – and that damned coat. He was a presence, a force of nature. Statuesque in every way. Impenetrable. Stood there waiting for his chance to explain how what he had done to her was justifiable, that she had made an invaluable contribution to his bloody work. No one else could have helped him; the spotlight was on her. Molly felt her blood boil.

“You want me to help you understand?” Molly asked him. 

“Yes.” He held her gaze this time.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay...”

__________

The expression on Molly’s face was quite unlike her. There was a skittish excitement about her movements that unnerved Sherlock as he watched her walk around the counter and come to stand in front of him. Close enough that he could feel the gentle warmth of her. Here the twist behind his diaphragm, his nerves on edge. He watched her breathing through parted, pale lips.

“Take off the coat,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Take off your coat.”

He hesitated for a fraction of a second before complying with her command, depositing the heavy tweed on the armchair.

“Stand on the rug – in the middle,” she pointed behind him.

“Why?”

“Now.”

They moved together. He took the few steps needed to stand in the centre of the living room space, his feet on the woven rug. Molly went to the wall by the doorway. Sherlock sent her a questioning look. This decisive action was so at odds with the anger he had witnessed inhibiting her and robbing her of her poise moments before. Her brown eyes bored into his for a moment before she flicked the switch and they were both plunged into darkness. 

The most complete and total darkness Sherlock had ever experienced in London. 

**_Graveyard shifts._ **

**_She needs to sleep when convenient._ **

**_The window dressings allow her to close out the real world,_ **

**_create a virtual night-time._ **

**_Why here, in her living room?_ **

**_Because her personal space_ **

**_isn’t always her own, is it?_ **

Another unsettling twist in his middle. Sherlock shook his head. He widened his eyes and scanned left to right, tuning into his remaining senses to try to build up a mental map of…

“Shut up!”

Molly’s voice was a whip-crack and Sherlock startled. Recovering as quickly as he could he replied, “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking,” Molly snapped. “It’s annoying.”

She was moving, out of his reach - he could hear her footsteps. In any similar situation he might move himself, seek the security of a wall or piece of furniture, but instinct told him to stay where he was. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“Do you know what you are, Sherlock Holmes?”

For the second time that day he prepared himself to have his many and varied faults laid before him. He willed himself to be indifferent, to treat the assault as if it were coming from an inconsequential source, to believe that it would cause him no injury. In reality, he dreaded Molly’s next words as much as he had John’s. He also suspected whatever the former had to say would not buoy him as the latter had.

“I...” he went to speak.

“I said shut up.”

Sherlock closed his mouth. Molly was still moving – prowling. He felt exposed in the dark space. Intimidated.

**_Understand yourself, man._ **

His confidence would usually rise in a situation like this – his faith in himself his best armour. A prickling, hot sensation did surface, but this time he felt no less vulnerable.

“Your a child,” Molly hissed. “A boy who never grew up. Still clinging to the apron strings of his impressive mother and terrified of falling into the shadow of any other female. Best to pretend we don’t exist, you’ve _deduced_...” she infused the word with such venom, “… and if we can’t be avoided then casual manipulation for your own ends is about as much interaction as you can stand.”

Sherlock blinked several times as he absorbed the barrage of words and tried to process them. He was appalled that this was how she saw him. Deeply saddened that she thought he derided women or that any woman in his life had been responsible for his failings. These were categoric untruths and, his wonderful mother aside, the woman radiating hatred towards him now had proven every suspicion he’d ever formed about the infinite capabilities of women. She was still teaching him even at this very moment. He hung his head as Molly continued, though, too overcome with a curiosity that was akin to self-harm to try to stop her.

“Your role models must have been so weak and your early relationships so flawed that you had to come up with the excuse of having sociopathic tendencies to explain away your incapability and – bonus! - make sure no-one tries to get close to you because, let’s face it, who wants the unrequited workload of trying to befriend the un-brefriendable?”

The room dissolved.

**_Two small boys were running through long grass towards a small copse of trees._ **

**_Avast ye, landlubber!_ **

**_The boys giggled and stumbled as they chased along their path._ **

_I’ll cut you to ribbons!_

**_They were approaching the stone surround of an old well in the shade of the trees._ **

**_He saw down into it’s depths._ **

**_Heard the echoing drips._ **

**_Smelled the dank, mossy stone._ **

**_How deep is it?_ **

**_He felt a wooziness, the dark of the well rising up to meet him._ **

_Will – don’t fall!_

**_He felt the tug of a hand in his and he turned to Victor,_ **

**_his face was ruddy and smiling._ **

_Chuck a stone in and count how long until you hear the splash. Don’t jump in,_

_you plonker!_

**_Victor laughed then and he saw him turn and run off into the woodland,_ **

**_beckoning him to follow…_ **

“No… no...”

Sherlock’s consciousness returned to Molly’s room but his disorientation was now total in the blackness. 

**_Child._ **

**_Poor role models._ **

**_Un-befriendable._ **

“… not true...”

Sherlock pressed his fingers to his temples, hearing his voice strained and quite unlike his own. A surge of desperation rose within him – he had to make her understand, he wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own. Molly was moving faster than before, he became aware of her position for a fleeting moment and thought he could track where in her prowling circle she was, so he focussed on that to centre himself.

“Oh, so he’s not entirely an idiot,” Molly’s voice came from somewhere entirely unexpected and her tone of derision was cutting. Sherlock fought not to become frantic. “He does realise calling himself a sociopath is bollocks.”

Sherlock winced as if she had spat at him. That bitter feeling swirled in his gut. A part of him bristled and he clung to that – did Molly think she was the first to throw his psychological makeup at him in anger, as if it would come as a shock to him? But as fast as the thought crossed his mind, so his anger was doused. There instead was still the hot, roiling something, creeping up his spine, clouding his reason and dulling him.

“You use.”

He jumped violently, her breath on his neck. The next time she spoke he made himself dizzy whipping his head around to locate her.

“You’re a user. You treat women like the tools of your trade, while we serve a purpose.”

“No,” he reached towards where he thought she was.

“The woman – the one who died – what did she do for you, Sherlock? How useful was she?”

Sherlock pressed his eyes closed and willed the room to stop spinning, tried with all his strength to master himself – he needed her to listen.

“This is the part where you speak,” the tone of Molly’s voice was alien. “And don’t be boring.”

Sherlock dragged in a deep breath. This wasn’t what he wanted to discuss, but he couldn’t ignore her plea for answers. He had to hope they would be rewarded with a chance. “Irene Adler wasn’t useful, she was a distraction.”

He heard the frustration in his voice.

_Softer, Sherlock._

“Oh - well,” Molly laughed unnaturally. “If only I’d known that all it took to get Sherlock Holmes into bed was to distract him I could have spent all these years jumping out of broom cupboards or streaking naked across the lab waving my arms above my head!”

“Molly...”

Sherlock sensed the rising mania in her voice. He wanted to reach out to her, reassure her. Beg her. His heart pounded against his ribcage.

“After all...” Molly continued at speed, “… she made the biggest impression on you any woman ever has by taking her clothes off. Christ! It would be such a laughable cliché if it wasn’t such a gigantic disappointment!”

Her vitriol was physically shocking and Sherlock staggered as a scorching flare of emotion ripped through him.

Shame.

His eyes widened. He felt for the first time the heat rising in the skin of his own neck and face. Shame. He was deeply, truthfully, irreparably ashamed. Naming this beast inside him gave it a license to wrap it’s talons around his heart, tearing at what was left of it and causing him such agony that he cried out, wrapped his arms around his chest to hold himself together.

**_He was standing tall and proud._ **

**_Before him - a dancing parade of characters like auditionees,_ **

**_ready to prostrate themselves at his feet for the judging._ **

**_He circled, out of their reach._ **

**_He filtered or dismissed their little speeches – only an occasional word or phrase_ **

**_igniting his interest, even then rarely more than fleetingly._ **

**_Thieves and liars, idiots, killers and the last-chancers took their place in his circus ring_ **

**_and he smiled down on their inadequacy,_ **

**_his collar turned up against the east wind._ **

****

**_A sharp stinging in his cheek sent him spinning._ **

**_He returned his focus to the centre of the ring to see John Watson, seated, doing the pose._ **

_What pose?_

**_The pose with the legs crossed at the knee, hands clasped in your lap._ **

****

_I don’t do that._

**_Yes you do – when you’re diagnosing me._ **

****

_You know what I’m going to say anyway._

**_No I don’t – and that’s why I find the pose so annoying._ **

****

_No, I know you._

**_One hundred percent._ **

****

****

**_John turned in the chair, when he turned back it was Lestrade looking up at him,_ **

**_holding up his camera phone, a smirk upon his face._ **

****

**_Then Mrs Hudson, pointing a gun at his chest._ **

****

**_Then Mycroft, so clearly suppressing the urge to call him stupid_ **

**_behind wounded eyes._ **

****

**_Then her._ **

****

**_And her._ **

****

**_And her and her - every time she turned her face_ **

**_she turned back again and her eyes bored into him..._ **

****

**_Oh, God!_ **

His knees made jolting contact with the floor and he covered his mouth with his hands. He pushed downwards and downwards against the rising tide but it was greater than him and he crumpled under it’s weight, poisonous shame coursing through his veins and causing his tears to scald his skin.

**_The water was rising up his torso,_ **

**_cold and suffocating as he held his friend’s exhausted frame_ **

**_and fought to keep both their heads above water._ **

He put his hand down at his side, feeling himself about to fall, and his fingers landed on a smooth surface.

**_Opening his eyes he saw his hand splayed over the wood of the coffin._ **

**_Her name shone in the cold, blue-green, shimmering light._ **

**_And still the water rose._ **

Sherlock squeezed his eyes closed and heard a strange, strangled sound come from his throat. This was it. He was about to drown. A blazing turned his vision blood-red and then white, making him shield his eyes with his forearm where he half lay on the floor.

A pair of strong arms took hold of him, pulled him up and into their embrace and he grabbed on for dear life. He buried his face in Molly’s shoulder and felt her hands sure and steadying across his shoulder blades. She didn’t speak now, not with her voice. She smoothed her hand across the material covering his back, swaying her body gently and him with it. He clung to her - she was the only thing holding him up. Exposed and raw, he could barely breathe past the squeezing tightness in his chest. 

So this was how he would die. Held by the one person he owed understanding, the words he needed her to hear robbed by the pain, while his unworthy heart gave out. He was a pathetic fool and deserved no better than such a fate but – by _God_ and all the angels – he _would_ die, alone, unseen, somewhere barren and hard, rather than be the reason this woman ever felt pain again. 

“This is how it feels,” Molly’s voice was a thousand fragments that peppered his skin and sent another chilling wave of shame chasing up and down his spine.

“I know. I know, now."

Sherlock held Molly as tightly as he could, wanting to put her back together with his bare hands.

“I promise you,” he pulled back from her, gripped her shoulders, his heart beating wildly as if to convince him he wasn’t dying, that he had time left. “I swear to you, I will never again use you or treat you as an experiment.”

He watched Molly’s eyes close, tears spilling from their corners. He took his hands away, horribly aware of the damage he could unwittingly cause her. Emotion swamped him again.

“What happened, Sherlock?”

“Oh, God...” The words broke up, he couldn’t look at her. “You don’t know me.”

She gently lifted his chin to make him. “I do, Sherlock.”

Sherlock listened to her shallow, quickened breath, searched the depths of her shining eyes. His chance could soon be gone, but it was not gone yet.

“I wanted to _hurt_ you. But this…” she swallowed, her expression twisted. “Something or someone has beaten me to it. Tell me, please.”

Her request was like a distant flare; a hope of redemption. A twist behind his diaphragm. Some small control over that terrible beast. He blew out a long breath, swallowed and sniffed. 

He looked around him, finding the photograph album laid partly covered by his overcoat on the chair. He went to collect it and brought it back to sit with Molly on the floor, opened it to the page nearest the back. He carefully removed the photograph of a fine red-setter, stood on point against a background of long grass. He cleared his throat.

“This one,” he offered it to Molly. “Did it come from Mycroft?”

“Yes,” Molly confirmed, taking it, turning it over. She coughed, rubbed her eyes. “He was… he was very difficult about it all.”

Sherlock removed another photograph, this one showing a room full of lights and people – a party – with his mother central in the frame and leaning down, planting a kiss on Mycroft’s cheek to his obvious chagrin. Sherlock was stood beside him, grinning at the camera. In his hand was a small, blue toy aeroplane. 

He turned this image over and held it next to the one in Molly’s hand, comparing the reverse sides. The one in his hand was an off-white colour with the logo of the printing shop watermarked in repeating diagonal lines, visible in the light coming from the lamp Molly had lit on the side table. The one in Molly’s hand was unmarked and bright white.

_I monitored you. I was looking after you._

“It’s not a very good fake,” Sherlock said, wiping under his eyes. “But then, this is what I wanted to see. If I ever had even the slightest suspicion, I chose not to pursue it.”

“I don’t understand,” Molly said quietly.

He carefully took the printed image from her, placed it and the one he held between the pages of the album and laid that to one side. He looked at Molly’s hand where it lay on her thigh. Some sense of composure had returned to him in these last few, quieter, moments, but uncertainty remained prominent in his mind. His reason told him he didn’t deserve to seek comfort from her, reminded him that offering it to her would only thinly disguise his selfishness. But his mind showed him an image of taking her hand and the feeling this arose in him was so heavenly that he could not bear to do otherwise.

He placed his fingers carefully over the back of her hand. Relief swept over him as she moved to allow him to curl his fingers around hers.

“Molly - may I explain?”

She nodded.

They sat together on the floor, side by side, with their backs against the settee, bathed in the glow of the lamp. Molly held his hand in both of hers. They held hands. And he began to talk. 

__________

Silent tears slipped down Molly’s face all the time Sherlock was speaking. He passed her the handkerchief from his jacket pocket. As he did, the thought crossed Molly’s mind that he would probably be more comfortable if he took the jacket off. She would also be more comfortable if she took off the boots she had put on to go to the shop. But neither of them seemed willing to let go of the other’s hand. The feel of his fingers between hers, the warmth of his palm and the way he held her hand tightly. She was transfixed by the solid reality of him, right there next to her. The more he told her, the more amazed she became that he was even still alive, let alone somehow by her side and holding her hand. Her heart ached, every time the feeling grew stronger fresh tears surfaced. 

Molly had thought she had it worked out. In all likelihood some of what she had said to him, accused him of, tonight had been close to the truth and while she felt sick to think of what she had done to him, felt numbness inside rather then the satisfaction she had hoped for, she still believed honesty held the greatest value and that she had acted and spoken with it. Stood-up for herself and held him to account. The horror of Sherlock’s reality, though, far exceeded her imagination. 

She thought back to that winter when she had got in touch with Sherlock’s parents and his brother to ask for photographs to put in an album for him. The only gift she could think that might be something he didn’t have. It hadn’t been an easy experience at any stage of the process. Sherlock’s father had answered the phone (Molly had felt guilty using the in-case-of-emergency number Sherlock had given her, but not as guilty as curious) and he had been so lovely. But a little scatterbrained and reluctant to ask his wife if she could help with the task as she was ‘very busy with something or other.’ She’d sat with her phone on loud-speaker listening to Radio 4 in the background at the other end for almost ten minutes. When a packet of photographs landed on her doormat a week later Molly had poured over every one. She tried to gather evidence that his genius mother – according to Google – had been cold or cruel, or that his father had been neglectful or absent. Something had caused their sons to become infuriatingly, tragically distant from their true feelings and she wanted to find it in show-offish parties, strained family picnics and forced poses. She hated to admit it, but she found none of these things nor anything else to give her clues, so she’d told herself they were all as good at hiding the truth as the youngest member of their family. Well, youngest as far as she knew then.

The only strangeness she encountered came from Mycroft himself, whose dismissal of her and her request was entirely expected based on what Sherlock had told her about him and how hard it had been to get as far as the inbox of his secretary’s secretary. The fact he sent her anything at all came as a shock, the photo itself was unfathomable. She’d included it purely because she imagined Sherlock might find some comfort in it in the way she hoped he would all of the other images of his seemingly happy childhood. Of course she also harboured other hopes for the giving of that gift, but they had been all but trampled, reduced to a lingering confusion to go with the ghost of his lips on her cheek. 

She’d felt no closer to understanding his family or Sherlock himself. Now, having heard the heart-wrenching story from it’s awful beginning and as far as the horror of the sister he had not known existed murdering five people in front of him, she realised no amount of research could have brought her anywhere near the truth. If she had asked him outright she would have taken his word as gospel and even he, the master of cold, hard fact, had managed to bury the truth in the depths of his psyche, deeper even than the unfathomable reaches of his mind palace. The human brain was no mystery to her, but the mind probably always would be. 

She stroked his knuckles, watched Sherlock watching her. 

“Eurus forced John, Mycroft and me to play her games,” his nose wrinkled as if in disgust and he shook his head a little. “We believed that if we did, she would spare innocent lives. Twice she showed us that she would willingly and with no remorse go back on her word.”

He looked up at her. “When it became apparent she had set her sights on you I could not take the risk that she wouldn’t call my bluff on that third occasion if I refused to do as she bid me. She told me only hearing those words from your lips would stop her. I believed I was saving your life.”

“Why me?”

“James Moriarty told her about you. About us. I thought Eurus wanted me to show her my capacity for cruelty, my willingness to solve a case regardless of the heart I would break in the process. At the same time laying bare my weakness, my inability to distance myself from the work, my head from my heart, to tell what was real from what was trickery...”

“Oh, Sherlock.”

“What I didn’t understand straight away was that she also wanted – perhaps only wanted – was for me to show her my capacity for love,” he held Molly’s gaze. “Because if I showed her that I was capable of love, that my heart could respond to another, she would know that I wouldn’t abandon her despite everything she had done.”

Molly felt her heart-rate climb, a light-headedness came and went, she squeezed his hand tighter and he laid his other over hers. 

“You saved my life, Molly,” he said. “When you made me reckon with myself you gave me the greatest worth. And that chance to save my sister.”

“How? How did I do that?” she heard her voice shaking. She’d meant to stop all this, take a step away for good. But now? 

“You asked me to say what I was forcing you to admit. You made me admit what I thought I was merely asking you to say. You made me understand.”

Molly held her breath. Sherlock hadn’t so much as offered to touch her apart from holding her hands while they had sat there. But his eyes told her he wanted to be closer, his focus and his body were directed towards her and she had mirrored him. Whatever she thought, whatever she might think in the time to come, she could not have pulled herself away in that moment. Their brows were only inches apart when he said it. 

“I do love you, Molly.”

It was little more than a whisper but he was so close she could have understood his words from the feel of his breath on her skin. Such a quiet, gentle moment but the power of it was overwhelming. Molly tipped forward to touch her forehead to his for stability. And just to be touching.

“I love you,” he told her again.

She laid her cheek against his, her lips at his jawline. He smelled divine, the heat of his skin was overpowering. Molly wanted more. The weight she had carried around with her these last months – longer, since she had first laid eyes on this man – dropped away leaving a gaping vacuum inside her. With indecent speed, desire rushed in to fill it and she felt an unbridled desperation for him. 

“Kiss me,” she breathed into the corner of his mouth, hearing her own wantonness. There was no room for second thoughts now, she was acting entirely on an instinct which had waited a hell of a long time to be allowed to take over. He loved his friends, truly, he’d made her cry with the strength of it, but she had to know he wasn’t talking about that same kind of love now. She swayed into him as he shifted, opened her eyes longing to see desire in his. 

His irises were a stormy sea, the pupils wide and there was a sinfully beautiful colour high over his cheekbones. There was a pause.

“I… I don’t think I know how to just kiss you,” he admitted, his voice deep and loaded with a forced control that made Molly’s stomach drop despite what he was saying. “I promised you I wouldn’t use you as an experiment again. I’m afraid I might do that now.”

She laid her hand on his cheek. He sighed, his eyes rolling closed. Slowly, he turned his lips into her palm and kissed her there, pressing her hand to his face with his own. Molly felt confidence ripple through her and take over. She touched her lips to his cheek, the corner of his eye, his furrowed brow. He sighed again and Molly heard it snag on his vocal cords, the delicious sound of his heart battling to get past his reason. And she knew. 

“Don’t think,” she said in between kisses, closing her eyes so she could better feel the revelation of his skin under her lips. 

Pulling her hand from his face he turned sharply and caught her mouth with his. Molly’s heart seemed to burst, sending a fizzing electricity along her limbs. His lips pressed into hers, urgently. Softness and warmth, fire and pure energy. Her simplest and most wishful fantasies made real. He tilted his head, cradled hers. Her instruction had opened a door for him – a floodgate – nobody kissed like this to find out what it was like; kisses like this only happened when nothing else would do. 

Perhaps they should only ever have communicated non-verbally. Perhaps their most truthful exchanges had been. Help, deeds, shared glances, pointed looks, cups of coffee. The occasional hard slap.

Molly fought to keep a giddy smile from her face. Chasing up the euphoria was that liquid want, so she used her hands to tell him. She spread her palms over his collarbones, frustrated by the layers of fabric between her and him. She pushed her thumbs inside the open collar of his shirt, resting them purposefully on his pulse-points. She could feel there the physical effect she was having on him and her stomach plummeted as another beautiful, barely-there sound in his throat let her know he knew exactly what she was doing . She parted her lips, deepened the kiss, accompanied by a dragging in of breath through his nose. With the very tip of her tongue, she touched his lower lip.

Their eyes opened. She watched his eyes flick fractionally from side to side, burning with the desire she had always wanted to see but even more powerfully beautiful in the flesh than she could have ever dreamed. They were both still for a moment; on the threshold of a new world.

Molly imagined Sherlock thought she was the experienced one in this situation. What he didn’t realise was that, until now, she had never experienced even the possibility of something beyond the physical or comfortable – of fulfilment. For Sherlock, acting on lust, she believed, wasn’t new. That wasn’t new for her either, but he didn’t see that they were on equal footing despite their very different experiences of relationships. Neither of them wanted to repeat past mistakes, neither wanted to make new ones. Each of them could claim to have hurt the other. 

“You can’t know, Sherlock.” His eyes focussed dead on hers and she knew she’d hit home. “I don’t know, either.” She picked up his hand in hers and laid it flat to her chest, over her heart. “But I feel.”

Sherlock looked at his hand on her front. The faintest smile appeared on his lips. He looked up at her through dark lashes and Molly thought he must have felt the skip in her heartbeat. Then he lifted both his hands and slowly took her face in between them, so carefully – like she were some precious thing. He leant forward, softly kissed her forehead, the corner of her eye, the tip of her nose, her cheekbone.

“Molly Hooper,” he said. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I love hearing what you think, so do let me know :)
> 
> Take care xx


End file.
